Directive 51 Read Online Free PDF Page A

the deep shadow. Surrounded by a chest-high chain-link fence, the concrete tub, the size of a semi trailer, yawned empty; tomorrow it would receive a fresh load of plastic from the city, filling it almost to the top.
    The two Christians bowed their heads and held hands. “Lord Jesus,” Zach prayed, “let this be the first step in cleansing Your Earth. Bring off Daybreak and bring us a world fit for our children to grow up in. Let what we do be done according to Your will. Amen.”
    ChemEWalker echoed, “Amen.”
    Zach pulled out his bolt cutters, took the lock neatly off the chain-link gate, opened it, and descended the short iron ladder into the bin. ChemEWalker began handing him down the two-liter bombs, and Zach placed them using an equilateral triangle of PVC pipe twenty centimeters on a side, to space them roughly an equal distance apart. When he had placed about twenty, the others returned, and after that, the swift, silent work, in all but total darkness except for the pinprick stars above the bin, went very swiftly.
    It was still night-dark when Zach, GreenCop, and SirWalksALot climbed out of the concrete pit, whose bottom was now covered with evenly spaced bombs. DarwinsActor handed him the laptop, and Zach logged into his secret account, clicked a couple of buttons, and said, “The weather stations are all reporting; the bottles are all reporting; they’ve confirmed messages between each other. We’re good to go. Arming now.”
    He realized all six men were holding their breath, and he wanted to grumble that he had trusted the biologists to make the organisms, ChemEWalker to make the black powder, and everyone else to carry the tubs and not drop them. But he supposed they were entitled to nervousness too.
    The list scrolled by. “They’re all armed and talking to each other. Let’s go.”
    He started the computer’s hard drive reformatting on the laptop as they walked back, and left it under the front tire of the RV; when they pulled out, the brief, grinding crushing sound under the tire meant that nobody, ever, could retrieve the codes to disarm the system. “The sweet crunch of commitment,” DarwinsActor said, and for once, Zach didn’t find him irritating at all. Thank you, Lord, he thought, and almost jumped at the coincidence when Bugs said, “Amen.”

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. JAYAPURA, PAPUA PROVINCE, INDONESIA. 9:25 P.M. MONDAY, OCTOBER 28.
    The local police called back in about two hours, and Armand Cooper thought that had to be a good sign; if they were in on the riot or had instigated it, they’d have pretended he’d never called them. “We would like you to stay down very low behind furniture,” the police captain said; his English was excellent, with a mild Delhi accent. “We are going to try to put a perimeter between your building and the crowd. We do not think they are serious because, you know, if they were, they would have broken down your door by now, but accidents can happen with such a crowd, you know, and we’d like to make sure it doesn’t.”
    “I agree completely,” Cooper said.
    The captain laughed. “Good, you are in good spirits. Have you been hurt?”
    “No.”
    “And you can reach food and water, without showing yourself through the window? We need to make sure you have no snipers before you stand up.”
    “It’s dark in here, and shots have been bouncing off the windows,” he said. “I can chance it if there’s a reason, but I don’t think there’s much of one yet.”
    “Well, the infrared scopes are cheap and standard now, and a shot upward from a handgun in the street might bounce off, but I would not want to bet the same thing would happen if it were to be a high-powered rifle coming straight through the glass.”
    “I’ll trust your expertise.”
    Another laugh. “Stay low. Wait for us. Don’t get hurt. We’ll be there soon. And sometime you and I will have lunch and talk about all this and laugh very much.”
    “I’ll enjoy that.”
    After they